The Child Protection eNewsletter

FBI Director says “we’re losing” the war against child porn… 

U.S. law enforcement is losing the battle to combat child pornography and child exploitation on the Internet, FBI Director Robert Mueller said during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.  Read More

"We're losing," Mueller said bluntly when asked about the issues of computer crime and child pornography on the Web by Representative Trent Franks, R-AZ.

"It is growing on the Internet, exponentially is probably too strong a term, but just about every crime there is has gravitated to the Internet, and in certain cases, the Internet has provided the vehicle for expansion that otherwise would not be there, and that's certainly true with child pornography," Mueller told Franks and the rest of the committee.

Due to the growing use of the Internet, digital photography and encryption software, the problem has become more pervasive in recent years.

The FBI and Justice Department have held meetings with major Internet service providers (ISPs) such as AOL to look at the feasibility of expanding data retention to go after child pornographers and those who provide the images on the Internet.

"I do believe that records retention would be of assistance in terms of addressing these problems," Mueller said when he was asked if legislation requiring additional record retention by ISPs would be useful.  "But it's not just one agency, it's a number of federal agencies, state and local law enforcement, all to be integrated in addressing what is an increasing problem."

Privacy groups such as the Center for Democracy and Technology have addressed concerns about privacy, security, cost and the effectiveness of retaining Internet records for longer periods of time.

"It's important that we have access to the records, and records retention by ISPs would be tremendously helpful in giving us the historical basis to make a case in a number of these child predators who utilize the Internet to either push their pornography or to lure persons in order to meet them," Mueller said.

Texas court:  State can take sect children to foster homes… 

Dozens of mothers from a polygamist retreat were bused away from their children Thursday, their legal efforts to stay united rejected as Texas officials sort out their massive custody case.  Read More

Two buses took the women from the San Angelo Coliseum, where they had been temporarily housed with their children. Texas officials were preparing to move the last of more than 400 children to group homes, shelters and residences, some hundreds of miles away, over the next few days.

One woman held a handwritten sign out the bus window that read:  "SOS.  Mothers separated.  Help."

"There are no words to describe how it was," said Velvet, a mother who was forced to leave her 13-month old.  She and other sect women have refused to give their last names, fearing it will affect their custody cases.

"We've been staying up nights to watch over the children because we didn't know what would happen," she said in a news conference outside the ranch gates Thursday.

In Austin, the state's 3rd Court of Appeals rejected the mothers' pleas to immediately stop authorities from busing the children taken from the ranch to foster homes.

The court agreed to hear arguments Tuesday, but attorney Robert Doggett, who represents 48 mothers, said that "having a hearing after the fact" was pointless.

The sect has set up a web site at http://www.captivefldschildren.org/  According to the site, “This site was created by the FLDS people to help the innocent children that were living at the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, Texas.”

Meanwhile, court documents point to a disturbed Colorado woman as the one who called Texas authorities alleging abuse at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Eldorado, Texas sparking a raid there.  Read More

The arrest affidavit says 33-year-old Rozita Swinton of Colorado Springs, Colorado has been involved in dozens of calls to women's shelters, rape crisis centers, and police departments across the country.  It also suggests Swinton may suffer from multiple personalities.

Swinton has a police record for making false reports beginning in 2005.  Anti-polygamist activist, Flora Jessop received the most recent calls from a girl named, "Rose," now believed to Swinton.  They are calls that were made to Jessop around the time of the raid at the FLDS ranch raid at the first of the month.  Jessop recorded around two hours of conversation over a two week period with someone she says sounded like a little girl.  Jessop says "Rose" was emotional and told her a friend was being victimized at the FLDS ranch.

CBS has a report on "Lost Boys", the term given to young men who are forced to leave polygamist compounds at a very young age.  Read More   Many say they're banished on pretexts, enabling older men in such sects to have less competition for younger women and wives.

Most of the Lost Boys are between 13 and 21 when they're kicked out of compounds such as the one in Eldorado, Texas from which authorities removed more than 400 children and teens in a raid earlier this month.

In other news… 

A high frequency noise machine dubbed “Mosquito” that emits a high pitch screech only audible to teens and some young adults in their early twenties has come to North America.  Read More  The sound was coming from a wall-mounted box, but not everyone can hear it.  The device, called the Mosquito, is audible only to teens and young adults and was installed outside the building to drive away loiterers.  The gadget made its debut in the United States last year after infuriating civil liberties groups when it was first sold overseas.  Already, almost 1,000 units have been sold in the U.S. and Canada, according to Daniel Santell, the North America importer of the device under the company name Kids Be Gone.

A 16-year-old Indiana boy asked for help obtaining a TEC-DC9 9mm pistol, saying it would be “awesome” to use the same weapon as the Columbine killers in carrying out mass murders in two states on September 11, a prosecutor said.  Read More  The boy, whose name was not released because of his age, was scheduled to appear Friday for a hearing in juvenile court.  He was being held at a juvenile detention center.  Authorities detained the teen on an initial charge of intimidation, St. Joseph prosecutor County Michael Dvorak said.  His office was preparing charges of conspiracy to commit murder after authorities found more than 100 knives at the boy’s home, Dvorak said.

Larry D. Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills, in his recent parenting book “Me, MySpace and I,” says that parents’ MySpace anxiety likely arises from their lack of understanding of what teens actually do on the social-networking site.  A third of parents have never glimpsed their teen’s MySpace page—and three-fourths do so less than once a month, according to his research.  Read More  And what parents might not know about MySpace is that it can actually help their kids.  Bolstered by interviews of more than 1,000 parents and 2,500 teens, Rosen’s research shows that the oft-stigmatized site can foster adolescent pursuits of true identity, friendship—and validation.  “Overall, based on my extensive research, the impact of the MySpace lifestyle on child and adolescent development has been positive,” Rosen writes in his book.  “It has provided a safe forum for expressing feelings and appears to enhance relationships and psychological well-being.”  Rosen found that only 12 percent of teenagers actually rendezvous offline with an online friend in his recent survey of 482 teens.  Of course, that still represents millions of teens putting themselves at risk.  For more information about parents should know about MySpace, visit  vol1_iss2

A trio of Louisville teenagers has been arrested and charged with plotting the death of a middle school student. Read More  Louisville police spokesman Phil Russell says detectives began investigating after a call from authorities at a middle school in eastern Jefferson County, who reported that there was word of a plot by some students to kill a fellow student.  Russell says three people had been working since March to plan the murder of a 13-year-old girl.

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